Oregon

Now THAT’S An Unethical Lawsuit!

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
"All right, sir---put down the sneakers and come out with your hands up..."

“All right, sir—put down the sneakers and come out with your hands up…”

Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution inmate Sirgeorgio Clardy should probably forget his aspirations of becoming a jailhouse lawyer, if his first effort is any indication.

Sirgiorgio, an aptly named pimp, is in stir because, among other things, he brutally stomped the face of a john who was trying to leave a Portland hotel without paying Clardy’s prostitute. Jurors found him guilty of second-degree assault for using his Air Jordans as a dangerous weapon to beat the john’s face to a pulp. Now the 26-year-old pimp turned prisoner turned pro se litigant has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Nike, the maker of the Jordans, claiming the shoe manufacturer shares responsibility for the assault that was among the crimes that drew him a 100-year prison sentence. (The jury also found him guilty of robbing the man he beat and  beating the 18-year-old girl he forced to work as his prostitute. This is not, I think it is safe to say, a nice guy.)

Clardy’s creative lawsuit claims Nike breached its duty to place a label on his athletic shoes warning purchasers that they could be used as a dangerous weapon, because, I guess, the evil shoes made him do it. Or, in the alternative, he had no idea that repeatedly slamming his foot down on a man’s head would do any harm. Or something. Basically, he’d just really like a hundred million bucks, and either doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, that he’s making a travesty of the justice system.

I am confident that there is literally no chance such a lawsuit goes to trial; if there is, I am through defending the legal system for good. This is a textbook frivolous lawsuit if brought by a real lawyer, rather than an unrepentant, violent, non-too-swift pimp.  The legal ethics rule that makes such monstrosities an official ethical violation, Rule 3.1, says that…

“A lawyer shall not bring or defend a proceeding, or assert or controvert an issue therein, unless there is a basis in law and fact for doing so that is not frivolous, which includes a good faith argument for an extension, modification or reversal of existing law.” Continue reading →

No Gun Control, But Our Leaders Have Succeeded In Making Schools Crazy

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments
"Kidding, kids! Just a drill!"

“Kidding, kids! Just a drill!”

You see, there really are consequences to our political leaders’ irresponsible fear-mongering. People still tend to believe and trust our leaders, the fools, and when prominent ones like President Obama and Diane Feinstein, aided and abetted by hysterical media voices like Piers Morgan and blathering celebrities like Jim Carrey, exploit the deaths of small children in a tragic school shooting to use fear rather than reason to pass additional gun regulations, it isn’t surprising that members of the public get frightened. This is supposed to cause them to push their representatives for gun measures that, in truth, have little to do with preventing school shootings, but it also causes them to act irrationally. Reckless conduct and cynical legislative strategies have consequences.

At Pine Eagle Charter School in tiny (population 288) Halfway, Oregon, administrators thought the risk of another Adam Lanza shooting up their small school was so serious that it justified staging an unannounced massacre drill. Two masked men wearing hoodies and wielding handguns burst into a meeting room full of teachers and opened fire, with blanks. Not that the terrified teachers knew that, until it was clear to them that they had been shot and weren’t dead. Continue reading →

The Murderer and the Governor

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

When a politician announces that he is taking a "moral stand," watch out.

Guess who has more integrity: Gary Haugen, the convicted double murderer whose scheduled execution in Oregon had been scheduled for next week, or Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, who blocked his execution?

It’s Haugen. The resident of Oregon’s death row had waived his appeals and was voluntarily submitting to his court-decreed fate when Kitzhaber stepped in, declaring his moral objections to capital punishment. But like many politicians’ objections to that other divisive social policy issue, abortion, Kitzhaber’s supposedly moral stand has more fine print than a gym membership. He didn’t commute Haugen’s sentence, or end the death sentences of the other men who have been condemned. The Governor went half way, essentially staying the executions for the term of his governorship, and pledging to seek reforms of what he called a “broken system” in 2013. Why 2013? It’s after the election, of course. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Stopping the Condemned From Accepting Death

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In Oregon, a judge has granted death row inmate Gary Haugen’s motion to dismiss his lawyers after they persisted in taking measures to block his execution. They had declared he was not mentally competent to waive his appeals and allow his own state-decreed death to proceed.

Leave it to lawyers to be convinced that they know what’s best, even when it involves someone else’s wishes about his own life and death.

Is the condemend prisoner who approves of his own excecution insane, or courageous?

In an attorney-client relationship, the lawyer is ethically bound to do what the client wants as long as it is legal and within the bounds of the ethical constraints on the lawyer. A lawyer can render advice and should; a lawyer can explain the legal consequences of a course of action. But substituting the attorney’s judgment for that of the client is taboo…except, all too often, in cases like this one, in which a death row inmate decides that letting justice take its course and accepting the state’s death decree is preferable to rotting in prison.  Continue reading →

Ethics Dunces: Beaverton, Oregon School District Administrators

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This one is the easiest of calls.

Seth Stambaugh, a student teacher for the 4th and 5th grades at an elementary school in Beaverton, Oregon, was asked by one of the students if he was married. Stambaugh said he was not and, when the student asked why, replied that it would be illegal for him to get married in Oregon because he “would choose to marry another guy.” The student asked if that meant Stambaugh preferred to be with other men, and Stambaugh responded, “Yeah.”

As a result of this exchange, a parent complained, and Stambaugh was fired. Continue reading →